How a price on carbon reduces emissions

Pollution isn’t free. There is a real cost to the environment and our health when someone — an individual or a business — pollutes, leaving the air, water, or land less clean for everyone.

By making polluters pay, a price on carbon pollution kickstarts behaviour changes and innovation. A well-designed price on carbon pollution ensures that as the price increases, so does the number of options to lower your footprint. As it’s non-prescriptive, there are many possible solutions across sectors.

By looking at three areas — transportation, heating, and electricity — this infographic series breaks down how a price on carbon can reduce emissions by kickstarting behaviour changes in consumers and businesses, while incentivizing innovation at the production level, which trickles down to more consumer choices for products that deliver a superior service or experience at lower carbon.

The Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation are thankful for the invitation to share our views on Environment and Climate Change Canada’s recently released regulatory framework for the output-based pricing system.

The Energy Policy Simulator is Canada’s first free, open-source tool giving you a chance to see how energy and climate policies influence emissions across the country.

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